Obama team offers calm, experts for swine flu

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama responded to the first domestic emergency of his presidency by urging calm — and then dispatching officials to the cameras to again urge Americans to be calm.

Obama said the emerging swine flu outbreak was “not a cause for alarm,” even as the government began urgent steps to respond to the small but rising number of cases. The calming words belied an intense reaction across departments and agencies.

The administration planned daily briefings to assure the public that officials are taking action. On Monday, the White House sent top health and homeland security officials out for televised briefings — and promised they’d return Tuesday and keep at it until the situation settles. And Obama inserted his own assurances in a previously scheduled speech, knowing the TV networks were waiting for his comments.

Obama’s aides were determined not to botch their first test.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the government was preparing as if the outbreak would become the pandemic many fear, dispatching people and equipment to affected areas and stepping up information-sharing at all levels of government and with other nations. And checking people at the borders and airports, though not stopping them.

Richard Besser, the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said his agency was aggressively investigating, looking for evidence of the disease spreading and probing for ways to control and prevent it.

The government also issued an advisory warning travelers to cancel any nonessential visits to Mexico — and gently took issue with a European Union health official who said the same thing about travel to parts of the U.S.

At the White House, a swine flu update, delivered by White House homeland security adviser John Brennan, was added to the president’s daily intelligence briefing.

On Capitol Hill, several panels scheduled emergency hearings for this week.

Obama, in his speech to a meeting of scientists, said his administration was “closely monitoring” the situation.

“This is, obviously, a cause for concern and requires a heightened state of alert,” he said. “But it’s not a cause for alarm.”

The White House also aimed to sidestep a potentially problematic diplomatic headache. Press secretary Robert Gibbs declined to discuss whether Obama officials have any concern about when Mexico notified the U.S. of the outbreak — particularly significant given the president’s trip to Mexico on April 16 and 17.

The White House said Monday that its medical unit asked if Mexican health officials and U.S. Embassy medical staff had any concerns about infectious disease and were told they did not. But a White House statement said, “We have no reason to believe they withheld any information they had at the time.”

The first case of swine flu was reported in Mexico three days before Obama’s arrival. Gibbs said the White House was not told, but he stressed that the president’s doctors have no concern about his health.